


The Apparition

by batyalewbel



Series: Call On Your Ghosts [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Force Ghosts, Gen, M/M, Non-Graphic Descriptions of Torture, background stormpilot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9090424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyalewbel/pseuds/batyalewbel
Summary: At some point around Kylo Ren's second visit and the third bout with the standard interrogator, he appeared.





	

That day on the Star Destroyer...or was it days? Was it years? Poe Dameron wasn't able to mark the passage of time during his captivity.

Time was marked only by pain and the amount of it being inflicted in a given moment. The physical pain they inflicted and the mental as his mind was cracked open and strange fingers rifled through it without care.

At some point around Kylo Ren's second visit and the third bout with the standard interrogator, _he_ appeared.

Poe knew his face only from the one or two holos that had survived. He knew a little about the Rogue One crew, because his parents taught him. But the lesson was fleeting in his child mind. Some far away strangers sacrificed themselves to get the Death Star plans. As a kid he liked hearing about Luke Skywalker's legendary run to blow up the planet killer much more. But when Shara was able to dig up the single holo they had she pointed to the blurry face in the corner and told him 'That's Cassian Andor, he led the team along with the former thief Jyn Erso.' The whole story made the smallest of impressions on him but nonetheless he remembered the hard lines of the mans face in that blurry picture.

Years later as a teenager skimming a history log, he found a brief paragraph with further details. They went against Rebellion orders to get the plans, they had almost no back up. Nobody on their crew survived the mission. For a moment he stared at the paragraph and a different picture. He had the same hard lines, the same sharp chin. He stood next to a towering Empire droid and a woman. The inscription on the bottom labelled the robot as his reprogrammed K-2SO unit and the woman as Jyn Erso, his collaborator on the Rogue One mission. He stared at their faces frozen in time. The picture was taken the day before they left for that fateful mission. They weren't posing for the photo, it looked like somebody had taken a picture and they happened to be in it. Somebody must have later realized what the picture was and kept it for the histories. But, the paragraph was short, and after staring at the photo and letting his imagination wander, he turned the page and was onto the next story.

He had only seen the man briefly, on screens instead of in life, but there was no mistaking the figure standing in the room with him. He recognized those hard lines and that sharp chin. But, the figure was translucent, hardly there, more phantasm than real figure. He seemed to suddenly appear in the corner of the room as the interrogator was leaving.

The two men stared at each other, one an apparition, the other on the verge of becoming one. Finally Poe spoke.

“What is this? Is this another trick from the First Order? Are you supposed to get me to talk?” his words slurred a little. They weren't letting him sleep and the exhaustion was breaking him down as much as the beatings and whatever Kylo Ren was doing to his mind. The other man didn't respond but something in the lines of his face deepened. He remained leaned against the wall, but his eyes were sad.

“What are you?” Poe asked and the other man shook his head a little.

“What...you can't speak?” Poe asked and Cassian just stared, still slouched against the bulkhead walls, but every muscle seemed lined with tension like he was waiting for something.

“Are you real? Can you get me out of here?” Poe asked and again he looked sad and shook his head. Poe almost spoke again but had to stop for the lump in his throat and the tears forming in his eyes.

“Than what is the point of you anyway?” he asked thickly

“If you can't help me than _leave._ I don't want you here,” the words came out with an anger that shocked them both and Cassian looked away. As quickly as he appeared, he seemed to have vanished and Poe was alone again.

Alone on the Star Destroyer...If they kept to their schedule Kylo Ren would be coming back in a few minutes. Coming back to rip him apart from the inside _again._ He quaked at the thought of feeling that a third time, he wasn't sure how much more he could take. Tears arrived more from pain than sadness.

“Hey...I didn't...” the words came out strained and weak. He tried again, a little louder, uncaring of what the First Order was thinking of the man yelling at nothing. Even if this was a figment of his imagination…

“Please...come back,” he said sounding broken in his own ears. He was going to die on this ship abandoned, even by his own hallucinations.

Suddenly, Cassian was back and staring at Poe with something like hesitation. But, Poe could already hear the footsteps approaching from outside the door. His breath came in shaky gasps, he looked at the other man desperately and managed to say,

“Please don't leave.”

The other man nodded, his expression grave as the door slid open and Kylo Ren stepped into the room like a shade from his nightmares. Poe watched Cassian, the man's dark eyes followed Ren's progress into the room, his mouth forming a distinct grimace.

“Are you willing to tell me the location of the maps today Commander Dameron?” he asked sounding deceptively gentle when Poe had already learned better.

“Go to hell,” Poe spat and in from the corner of his eye he saw Cassian smile. Kylo Ren wasted no time, throwing out an outstretched hand and stepping into his mind again, shredding everything in his path. Poe tried to hold himself together, tried to hang on to the pieces of himself. He did not want to shatter in front of this man _again._ But after what could have been minutes or hours a scream was ripped from his throat and he was forced to sit in frozen agony as he descended into this strange purgatory where there was nothing but pain and darkness. In this place, any shred of light was ripped away. He lost track of time, of how long he had been screaming, when he felt a hand on his arm. There was no weight to it, nothing to give the distinct impression of it's physical existence…but somehow he knew what it was. Where Cassian's hand rested, he felt a small warmth radiating out. It wasn't enough to engulf him or cancel out the darkness Kylo Ren had plunged him into, but it was a comfort nonetheless. A tiny far-away pinprick of light, an echo of something good.

It took two more visits from Kylo Ren and the interrogator before Poe broke and told them what they wanted to know. He'd left the maps with his BB-8 droid on Jakku. Cassian stayed with him the whole time, silent and sad. His mouth almost stuck in a pressed thin line. When they were alone Poe asked him questions and sometimes he would nod or shake his head in reply. What was Scarif like? Was he scared when he died? What was Jyn Erso like? Does he miss his crew?

When he was interrogated, Cassian would stand beside him, a somehow spectral and solid presence, giving him the idea of warmth without truly warming him. Hands would rest on his arm or shoulders throughout the ordeals and it was all he had to anchor himself.

And, in the end it wasn't enough. He still gave up everything to The First Order.

After Kylo Ren left that final time, Cassian retreated to the other side of the room. He seemed to sigh as he stared at Poe with those sad eyes that had suddenly gotten sadder.

“What? You have something to say? You think you could have done better?” Poe demanded, deciding to find accusation in the man's eyes.

“What does it matter you're not even real! You're not really here! You _died_! And now I'll probably die too so to hell with you Andor, to _hell with you!_ ” Poe was yelling at a ghost or a figment of his imagination and the man didn't flinch in the face of it. He just shook his head and slowly slid down to sit in the corner of the room. Poe didn't speak for a long time, finding himself drifting towards unconsciousness fueled by sleep deprivation and exhaustion.

“They probably will kill me,” he said suddenly and conversationally.

“They got what they wanted, they'll have no use for me.”

Cassian still said nothing. But as Poe slipped into sleep, he felt a warm hand on his shoulder and thought he heard a whisper say, ' _Te deseo buena suerte._ _'_

When he woke up there was a stormtrooper in the doorway saying “Ren wants the prisoner,” and Cassian was gone. He looked for the ghost but he was nowhere to be seen as the Trooper got him on his feet and led him through the halls of the Star Destroyer.

“Turn here,” the Trooper said and he obeyed, mechanically knowing he was moments from death.

Abruptly he was in a storage closet with this Storm Trooper who was removing his helmet, and telling him to listen, because he was helping Poe escape. It was all too much to believe but when the man told him he was doing this because it was the 'right thing to do' something in Poe soared like it might never touch the earth again. He stared into the other man's eyes and saw as much honesty as he needed to let a smile form on lips that had forgotten how.

“You need a pilot?” he asked.

“I need a pilot,” the man responded fervently and suddenly Poe was on an entirely new trajectory, one where he might live to see tomorrow, he might live to fight again, he might live long enough to recover all the pieces of himself that were shattered aboard this Star Destroyer. He might even live long enough to learn the name of his savior.

As this man led him through the ship, to the TIE-Fighter that would let them escape, Poe thought he saw a flash of _him_. A brief glimpse of the man who may have been imagined or a ghost.

Cassian watched him pass with a smile that nearly broke his face in two.

“ _Eres uno con la Fuerza y la Fuerza está contigo,_ ” he said and then he was gone.

Later...much later...when calm and peace had given him time, Poe Dameron would learn everything he could about Rogue One and Captain Cassian Andor. He never would be sure about the man who appeared to him. Whether he was truly a benevolent spirit giving him strength in one of the worst moments of his life, or simply a product of Poe's desperation and exhaustion. 

No matter what the truth was, Poe would remember the man for what he was and he would credit Captain Cassian Andor as one of the two men who saved his life. 

Poe never saw him again.

 

–-----

 

_When Cassian watches the pilot head towards an escape, whose success he can already see, he can't help but smile. “The Force is with you and you are one with the Force,” he says in the language he knows they both speak. He doesn't quite understand how he knows so much about this pilot. It's not like he had truly known the boy's parents beyond fleeting moments where they passed each other in the halls on Yavin IV._

_And yet he had found himself drawn to this boy. He had stayed with him because there was nothing else he could do. It was not in his nature to comfort, but he had learned a lot in the time since his death. As he watches the two boys scramble towards escape and still more life he smiles._

“ _Have you been here this whole time?” a voice asks and he turns to find Jyn beside him with that soft smile that only developed in the many years after Scarif. Cassian nods jerking his head in the direction of the boys climbing into the TIE-Fighter. She follows his gaze and sees them both._

“ _Ah of course,” her smile turns knowing. She glances back in time to see something that raises her brows._

“ _A Storm Trooper saving a Rebellion pilot, and I thought we had seen it all,” the smile is still in her voice as he looks down at her, resting an arm around her shoulders._

“ _Not even close, Stardust, not even close.”_

_Now she aims her sunshine smile up at him and nods once, away from the boys who are unleashing chaos as they power up the TIE-Fighter while it's still leashed to the ship._

“ _The others are waiting,” she says and he can only nod in agreement. He takes her hand and then they are both gone to where the rest of Rogue One is indeed, waiting for them. Once they're gone the pilot and the Storm Trooper will escape the Star Destroyer. They will be separated but they will see each other again. And most importantly, they will both survive a long, long time._

**Author's Note:**

> To live in a galaxy far, far away...see what I did there? XD  
> I have a lot of feels about these two. I like the idea that in death the cast of Rogue One could come to assist the Force Awakens kids. I may write more for Rey and Jyn or Finn and Bodhi.
> 
> According to Google Translate and user yersifanel(thank you again!), here's what Cassian said to Poe  
>  _Te deseo buena suerte_ \- I wish you good luck  
>  _Eres uno con la Fuerza y la Fuerza está contigo_ \- the Force is with you and you are one with the Force


End file.
